The thesis explores the topic of data, death and digital legacy. As our lives become increasingly more digital and online, new challenges emerge. One of these is digital legacy, the data that we, intentionally or unintentionally, leave behind when we pass away. Despite death being an universal human experience, it remains largely unaddressed within many digital services, platforms, and technologies that we use in our everyday lives.

Through an extensive academic literature review, supplemented by findings from benchmarking, informal interviews, and grey literature, the thesis identifies key tension areas and challenges that exist within the topic. The thesis then points to three different intervention areas in which these challenges can be addressed. Within the scope of this thesis, the focus is on the intervention area related to individual experiences.

Drawing from service design principles, the thesis utilizes convergent and divergent thinking, along with analysis and prioritization tools, to identify stakeholder challenges and gaps within the current service landscape. Findings from this phase resulted in a solution proposition in the form of a technical product consisting of both hardware and software. Through interaction design, the concept was further developed into an early-stage prototype, visualizing how the proposed solution might be experienced in practice.

The thesis highlights emerging challenges related to the rapid growth of information in our current society, and the implications it has on the individual’s experience of digital legacy and information management. It points towards a more conscious relationship with the digital data that we store, how we store it and what meaning it has when we ultimately leave it behind.